There are types of communications--messages or calls--that need to be treated with increasing urgency as they get older. For example, a message may contain dated material, such as a meeting announcement to an intended meeting participant, and its delivery to the intended meeting participant becomes ever-more urgent until the time of the meeting, at which time it becomes outdated and its delivery becomes unnecessary. Another example is timely subscription information which may be outdated by newer information, such as stock quotes.
Conventional messaging systems allow the message originator to indicate whether or not the message is a priority message, and notify the message recipient of the existence of any priority messages when the recipient accesses his or her mailbox. However, this does not address the need to treat some messages or calls with increasing urgency as they get older, e.g., as a certain time approaches.